Authors: Wong CKP, Chan EYY.
Chapter 3.3 describes important factors to consider when designing an intervention for health emergency and disaster risk management (Health EDRM), including:
- Key social and behavioural science theories, models and framework that could be used for designing interventions for the management of health risk arising from an emergency or disaster and related evaluative research.
- Theory-driven intervention methods..
- Methods to use for planning and developing an intervention to achieve behavioural change.
What is this chapter about?
The translation of knowledge gained from research into the implementation of interventions that address critical needs and risks is a challenge. Frameworks for intervention development can guide people who are designing or evaluating interventions that might be relevant to Health EDRM.
This chapter describes some practical and theoretical frameworks for designing interventions that are relevant to Health EDRM. It begins with the planning phase, which includes needs assessment, and outlines dominant theories or models for explaining and changing behaviours and environmental settings that can be used to inform the intervention.
Case studies presented in the chapter:
- Non-pharmaceutical interventions for the prevention of pandemic influenza.
- Importance of health interventions for coping with the highly contagious Ebola virus in Cote d’Ivoire.
- Health education intervention in a rural Chinese, earthquake-prone transitional village.
What are the key messages of this chapter?
- Developing effective interventions in Health EDRM requires review of the most relevant and applicable theories or models, as well as understanding of relevant approaches. .
- The theories on which the intervention design is to be based should be chosen on the basis of the health risk or problem as well as an understanding of the targeted populations and their health risk factors.
- Changeable factors and the mechanism for change should be identified.
- Translational research is needed to show sufficient evidence of effectiveness to justify implementing the intervention.
